Public forum on proposed $45M sewer facility in Lincoln Park

ALBANY – There’s been quite a stir surrounding the city’s proposed $45 million Beaver Creek Clean River project, which is a sewer facility poised to go into a portion of the Lincoln Park in the capital city.

Cited in a park, near a school and in a low-income, minority neighborhood, these aspects have been a focal point for those wanting to learn more or expressing outright opposition to the project.

You have the opportunity to learn more and ask questions next week at the public forum the Albany Water Department is conducting at 6:30 p.m. Monday, April 23, at the Thomas S. O’Brien Academy of Science & Technology school, located at 94 Delaware Ave. in Albany.

The facility would separate floatables — like trash, leaves and other debris — from the combined wastewater and storm water pipe that serves as the main line in Albany to the river. The line commonly is known as the Beaver Creek trunk sewer, or Big C. It would also chlorinate the water coming through.

The project is part of the state consent order Albany and other river cities are under to address the overflows into the Hudson River. Removing debris and chlorinating the water won’t reduce the overflows, but it will reduce the high levels of bacteria concentrations in the river that result from untreated combined sewer overflows.

Multiple combined sewers converge at Delaware Avenue at the top of Lincoln Park, limiting where the facility can be placed. It must be along the Beaver Creek sewer, which runs under Lincoln Park, the developed downtown district of the South End and an industrial park in a 100-year flood plain. The two latter options aren’t feasible because the city can’t build infrastructure in a flood plain, and the developed area would mean possible eminent domain of property, Albany Water Commissioner Joseph Coffey said.